The News Page – Key Information Area for Members
The News Page is a central to keeping your members informed about key ministries and activities in your Church. The page brings together Newsletters, Announcements and Upcoming events as well as external news feeds and weather into one quick news source. These areas represent the majority of content that will change frequently and maintaining them will keep the site interesting and members coming back to your site.
Quick facts:
- The Newsletter and Announcements section work through specialized pages and specialized page groups.
- Adding - Click the ‘Add Newsletter’ or ‘Add Announcement’ when editing the news page
- Deleting – Go to the page list and click the delete link next to the page name
- Ordering – Click the ‘reorder pages’ link in the Newsletters or Announcements page group on the page list.
- Teaser – Add a teaser in the bottom summary box when editing the Newsletter or Announcements page. The Page Title and the Teaser appear on the News Page
- Content – You add content to a page just like any other page. There is a beginning format on the page but this can be modified or deleted and new content components added.
- Upcoming Events are created through the calendar function – you must have the calendar (Interactive Plan and higher) on the website to use this function
- Make Visible – When adding or editing a calendar event if you click the ‘Visible’ option, it will show in the Upcoming Event section
- Time Period – By editing the Upcoming Events component on the news page you can set the Default View to ‘Upcoming Events’ which show visible events 0-90 days out or to ‘Upcoming Events (Year)’
- Content – The event ‘Name’ and the ‘Summary’ are on the News page.
- External Feeds can be added to the news page
- RSS Feeds – RSS Feeds are content feeds from external providers which are automatically refreshed each time the page is refreshed. A list of relevant RSS feeds is available at http://www.churchsquare.com/main/rss_feeds
- Add RSS Components – You can add additional RSS components just like any other component. Click the add button in a section header and select Interactive and the RSS Feed.
- Weather – The weather component is set by editing the component, adding your 5 digit zip code and selecting the theme.
Newsletter Articles
The newsletter section can increase people’s interest in the key ministries and activities of your church. The newsletter component is designed to create individual articles, like an online newspaper. However, many churches create their newsletter off line and want to upload the complete newsletter in a PDF format rather than individual articles. Both methods are explained.
Adding Newsletter as Individual Articles
- Login into your site
- Click on “Edit Site” and navigate to the News page
- Click on the “Add Newsletter” link
- You are now on the “Create New Page” screen. Add your ‘Page Name’ (which will also be the title that appears on the news page) and click ‘Create page and view page’
- You should now be viewing the page. Click the ‘edit page’ green button at the top
- Add content to the news article:
- Click on the ‘EDIT’ button in the component header directly above the test /image component (this is the second component on the page, the page title is the first component)
- You can type your newsletter title in the title box, add you Authors name, and then paste in or type in the newsletter content. If pasting in from Word you might find the copy difficult to edit. If you paste content into Notepad first and then into your site text component you can format the content using the site editor
- Change or delete the image
- To change the image
- Click “Click here to change this image”
- From the “Select Image” page you can either upload a GIF or JPG image or you can select from uploaded images by clicking on the blue menu on the left. Remember web pictures show at 72 dots per inch and should be correctly sized before uploading
- To delete the image click on the ‘Change layout’ yellow box in the upper right and select a non-image text component. You will lose the newsletter title and have to re-enter it in the Paragraph text
- Click the ‘Apply changes’ button. You can now add additional content components to the page if you wish
- Before leaving the page scroll to the bottom and type in a brief description of this newsletter. This and the page title will appear on the news page
- Click the ‘Apply Changes’ button at the bottom of the page.
Adding a Newsletter Created Externally
- Convert or save your newsletter into a PDF format. Usually you want to use the ‘smallest size’ option to reduce upload and download time. It is best if you file name has no blanks or symbols (dashes and underscores are fine)
- Login to your website and click on the file manager icon (filing cabinet) on the admin page and click on the ‘General’ tab and upload your PDF document
- Click on the properties for the uploaded document and copy the http: address without the ‘http://’
- Go to your news page and click on ‘Add Newsletter’ and add the title and click ‘Create page and view page’
- Click on the ‘Edit Page’ green button at the top
- Delete the image / text component (the second component on the page after the page title component) by clicking the ‘x’ in the component header and confirming
- Add an iframe component to the page by clicking the green ‘ADD’ button in the section 1 heading and selecting the ‘Standard / HTML’ category and the iframe component
- Paste the copied HTTP: address for the document into the Web Site box and adjust the height (800 should be appropriate) and click ‘Apply Changes’
- Before leaving the page scroll to the bottom and type in a brief description of this newsletter. This and the page title will appear on the news page. You might highlight some of the key articles in the newsletter
- Click the ‘Apply Changes’ button at the bottom of the page.
Announcements
If you upgrade to interactive site you have a calendar function. That allows you to enter key events and choose the most important to go onto the news page by selecting the ‘visible’ option. If you stick with the basic plan, you can use announcements for your calendar events. Otherwise keep the announcements to non-date specific announcements, like new staff, program opportunities, prayer needs, etc. Use the calendar for date specific events.
To add announcements use the “add announcement” button on the News page when you are in the site editor. After you have finished adding announcements, go to the page list, delete old announcements and reorder announcements if you need to. Remember, the default is for announcements to appear in reverse order on the News page from how they are listed on the page list. All of your announcements will appear on the announcements page (you add an announcements page to your site from the add page function) but only the pre-set number of announcements will appear on the news page. You can change the pre-set number by clicking on the edit button for the announcements component.
How Do I Add an Announcement?
- Login into your site.
- Click on “Edit Site” and navigate to the News page
- Click on the “Add Annoucement” link
- You are now on the “Create New Page” screen. Add your ‘Page Name’ (which will also be the title that appears on the news page) and click ‘Create page and view page’
- You should now be viewing the page. Click the ‘edit page’ green button at the top
- Add content to the announcement:
- Click on the ‘EDIT’ button in the component header directly above the test /image component (this is the second component on the page, the page title is the first component)
- You can type your content or paste it in from another application. If pasting in from Word you might find the copy difficult to edit. If you paste content into Notepad first you can format the content using the site editor
- Click the ‘Apply changes’ button. You can now add additional content components to the page if you wish
- Before leaving the page scroll to the bottom and type in a brief description of this announcement. This and the page title will appear on the news page
- Click the ‘Apply Changes’ button at the bottom of the page.
Upcoming Events
The events section of your News page is controlled by the calendar. When you are adding a calendar item there is a check box you can click to add that item to the Upcoming Events section of your home page.
Events manage themselves; you will not need to worry about deleting them. Events display from 90 days (or a year if that option is selected) before of the event until the end of the week in which the event occurs. (e.g., If an event occurs on a Monday it will display until Saturday.)
Caution: never add a recurring event to the Visible upcoming events section. Marking a recurring event as ‘Visible’ in the Upcoming Events section of the News page will result in the event appearing for each occurrence of the event over the next 90 days. If you have something like a 3 day conference and you want it visible on the News Page you will add the first occurrence of the event as a single event and make that visible and then add the remaining days as a recurring event but not visible.
How Do I Add a Calendar Item
- Make sure you logged into your site editor.
- Assuming your calendar is already created (if not you need to go to “add page” and add a the Calendar) navigate over to the calendar page
- Click on the date you wish to add an event and click on ”Add Event’
- This brings you to the event editor. The “Summary” text box will contain the description that will appear on the daily or weekly calendar and, if the event is linked using the Visible option, on the news page
- The Description appears on a separate page when the user clicks on the link in the calendar or the event page. If you do not fill in the long description, just the event name, time and location appear
- Add in the start time and duration. The Access option allows you to put an event on the calendar that can only be seen if you are logged in as the webmaster – this is the private option. You will probably always select public
- Check “Visible” to show the event on the News page.
- Enable event signup by checking the box – rather than using the simple event sign up form it is usually better to create a link in the summary and description that links to a signup form you created on the site using the Feedback Form component
- Click “Save Event”. Go through the process: the event is on the calendar, on the events page and that members can sign-up and pay online. The tool is very versatile and highly integrated
- Recurring events -- Recurring events are similar except that you enter the recurring options at the bottom of the page that allow you just about any recurring schedule possible. Of course you cannot sign-up for a recurring event because it is actually many different events. To enable these functions, you would have to enter the event as a single, non-recurring, event.
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